Visually, Paris, Texas could be the most American movie ever. I don’t even think the Texas tourism board could make the state look any better than these filmmakers did. Funny thing is, the picture was made by a bunch of Europeans. I suppose people get a better perspective of something when they are on the outside looking in. What’s amazing about this 1984 film is the enduring nature of the style — especially with what is happening in the world today. Worth a watch for inspiration alone. Some of my favorite looks below. [Paris, Texas at the Criterion Collection]

Coal Miner’s Daughter, another Tommy Lee Jones pic, also does a great job of capturing and romanticizing Americana. And it’s directed by a Brit. Check out those plaids everyone is wearing at the grange hall. And note how well Loretta Lynn’s father dresses, even when he’s gathering coal from the backyard. Good stuff.

Speaking of “better perspectives”: In his 1980 documentary “Lightning over water” Wim Wenders did the best portrait on once famous but not so much known director Nicolas Ray. Jim Jarmusch has a little role in that too.

This movie is all I was fantasizing about America before going there. Wim Wenders has a great talent to tell stories and show you some landscapes that are reflexions of the characters feelings. These shots are feelings, real locations, my dreamt America and a whole lot of other things for me as a foreigner…

Speaking as a Texas landscape photographer, I’m not sure what tintin means above. That there are large Mexican-American and Mexican populations along I-10 and below is obvious, but “ain’t America” is an exaggeration unless the definition of America is narrow indeed. Texas and Mexico are joined at the hip in love and hate, though Mexico may be the black sheep twin. That kind of cultural relationship is a foreign idea to Americans who haven’t lived near a border and are insulated in modern homogeneity. South Texas may seem foreign to them but there is nothing more American to me than that cultural mixture.

My problem with “Paris, Texas” is the jarring way that Wenders and cinematographer Robby Müller decided to handle fluorescent lighting, which was to leave it entirely uncorrected, resulting mostly in an extreme radioactive green color cast. This isn’t so bad in exteriors, but they even did it in interiors! An early scene in a doctor/dentists office is so green is looks like a nightclub. I think it calls to much attention to itself for no good story reason.